Whose Standards?

With the current educational emphasis on learning standards for academic areas with the concomitant benchmarks to keep track of progress, I think the emphasis on frequent testing has overshadowed the purpose of education. I have friends who are teachers in public and private school settings and they express frustration not only at the number of tests their students are required to take, but the inordinate amount of time that must be spent on test preparation and practice exams. Students are being evaluated so often that there is little time left for anything that won’t be included on an exam. This ultimately interferes with a well-rounded education. Let’s think about the ultimate goal of any schooling: to learn what one needs to know.

As a homeschooler, I admit I felt pressured to get through all the academic material I believed I needed to cover with my children. I wanted them to have a solid foundation in the traditional areas of reading, writing, and arithmetic. With my struggling learners, just covering the basic subjects took a significant chunk of time each day. Then there were the optional but still important activities of sports, music, homeschool group classes, and church. That didn’t leave a lot of time left over for many other things, but one of the biggest tasks I willingly took on was guarding my children’s schedules to ensure they weren’t overloaded by one structured activity after another after another. Kids need time just to be kids.

Why is downtime important for children and their education? Without it, they are never left on their own to figure out what they enjoy doing and to make decisions about how to spend their time and energy. They are not learning to use their time wisely and determine priorities when faced with numerous options. When children are kept on a very tight schedule they don’t have the opportunity to practice negotiating with peers to determine play activities. They don’t need to exercise initiative and decision -making skills if everything is predetermined for them. Children who are always moving from one adult-directed activity to another are never called on to manage their free time, yet this is a crucial life skill. Children need time to explore, create, play, relax, and develop relationships with others. These are all important experiences for children to help them develop and mature into fully functioning adults someday. Ironically, by pushing our children with an untoward emphasis on academic achievement, mini-adult schedules and the lack of downtime to learn non-academic life skills, we may be inadvertently prolonging childhood.

Another reason the current push toward “standards” in schools is unfortunate is that it ignores the importance of skills and developments that are not so easily broken down into benchmarks. As parents and educators, we all recognize that each child is an individual and will progress at his own pace. Yet the academic standards demand the same results from children as if they all develop along identical timelines. The notion that children should be assessed with a “one size fits all” approach is misguided, patently wrong and emphasizes only one aspect of overall development. I guess we should be glad that there are not official standards and benchmarks for life skills such as making a bed or learning to do laundry.

Imagine life as an adult where everything you do is assessed and compared to the performances of the other adults around you. How would it feel to take exams and prepare for tests in a perpetual cycle that never ends? It’s not realistic, nor is it fair. People make contributions because they have specific interests and strengths beyond common knowledge. Would you be satisfied if your value to other people was determined, for example, solely by your SAT scores or spelling skills? Wouldn’t you rather be appraised based on the whole of who you are rather than on splinter skill areas where you may or may not excel?

Someday, our children will be adults and they won’t have test results to demonstrate whether or not they are successful. The only tests most adults experience are the medical variety, not paper and pencil assessments. You may have an annual evaluation in your workplace, but even those rating scale results are pretty subjective. Rather than focus on the current education standards, consider setting some different standards and expand the parameters that help to define our children’s areas for learning. We need to teach our children that there are more important things to learn than just academic information. Can they prepare a meal? Are they learning to be more patient over time? Can they solve problems without always looking to others to provide rote answers? Are they living in a way that is consistent with the worldview you have taught them?

While the idea of taking a test makes many of us nervous, we need to help our children keep exams in perspective. Yes, a test is important but no test will ever be able to fully portray the entirety of our children’s accomplishments. Tests can be viewed, not as something to dread, but as a way of measuring progress in that particular subject area. Some of the most valuable things in life cannot be objectively measured. Learning obviously does not stop with the completion of formal schooling. Ultimately, our children need to have their own internal standards that can reassure them that they are on track or need to make adjustments. Once they are beyond their student days and the time of taking tests has passed, our children need alternative ways to determine whether or not they are meeting the standards they have deemed important in their lives.

____________________

Melinda Boring

Melinda has been married to Scott for 25 years and has three homeschooled children. Her 22 yr. old son and 21 yr. old daughter graduated from home school in 2006, leaving Melinda an “empty desker” of two along with her 17 year old daughter who will graduate in 2011. Two of her children and her husband have been diagnosed with AD/HD. The children also deal with auditory processing disorders and sensory processing challenges. The name “Boring” just doesn’t fit this family and Melinda shares many humorous moments in her speaking and writing endeavors. Melinda is the author of Heads Up Helping and has been a contributing author to multiple publications. She is a workshop presenter with a passion for helping struggling learners and providing practical strategies, compassion, and understanding for those with special needs. Melinda is also a speech/language pathologist with over 25 years experience and the owner of Heads Up, a company with products for those who learn differently. You can find her blog at the Heads Up website, where she writes as “Heads Up Mom”.

Comments

I think you hit the nail on the head. Back in the 1400’s, children were seen as little adults. We seemed to have grown out of that, but now everything is turning back towards demanding more out of children. The thing is, some people will naturally be drawn to making the world run efficiently, and others will be drawn to enhancing the experience through art, etc. I agree with you that children aren’t given the chance to think for themselves. Schools text to books, and kids don’t get real life experience or common sense. Thanks for sharing. (Found you through the Tell It To Me Tuesday link up!)

Great perspective! As a former public school educator, I was inundated with the emphasis that was placed on the TESTS. Schools would literally “shut down” for most of the year and drill, drill, drill for those tests. All the actual teaching and activities came after the test.

As a homeschooler, I embrace the opportunity to allow my children to learn and explore. I love to see the creative things they come up with when given a little time to just be. My biggest struggles, at times, come from my previous experience that wants to push, push, push them right along. I have to remind myself that I am preparing them for His purposes, not the world’s, and as long as I am praying for His constant guidance and remaining faithful, He will take care of them.

Veronica,
Thanks for taking the time to give feedback on this article. I will be forever grateful that homeschooling has allowed us to individualize our approach to education for our four boys. You are right, previous training and philosophies on education will sometimes eek their way back into our homeschools. However, God is faithful to constantly remind us to seek HIS face and leading. We are truly raising a generation of students who are trained to think differently.
Lori

Hey Anastasia! Thanks for stopping by! I’m so excited you found us. The invention of the “teenager” mostly started in the 1950’s. We actually studied an article on that recently in our Artios Home Companion curriculum. Children and teens will often live according to our expectations, and while that needs to be individualized for each of our children, often times, I think we sell them short in many areas. They have SO much potential that we often don’t realize because we are too afraid to allow them to take on responsibility that might stress them. If you knew me, you would know that I’m not about “pushing” kids…but at the same time, I think many times we baby and coddle our teens and even THEY would prefer having us believe in them on a higher level.
Lori